1930

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. No lower can a man descend than to interpret his dreams into gold and silver. The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary. Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones. It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. ...for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, 'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not? So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

I open my eyes and take a long, cold drag on the cigarette.

I steal.

I fix my eyes into those of the terrified driver ahead of me. I open my arms out wide to accept the embrace of the front end of the speeding train and the shocking, shrinking distance between it and the end of my future.

About time.